#subject delta from bioshock my BELOVED

[unholyplumpprincess]

One day I'm gonna make a list of all my childhood crushes and make x readers for them to also give anyone else that euphoria too

Like Samus from Metroid??? Bowser from Mario??? Fuckin Kisame from Naruto?? Im going IN one day

[wander-over-the-words]

The Fat Cat

Summary: Now under Grace’s care, Eleanor is still growing out of her rebellious phase and sneaks out. She doesn’t run into any more dog-eaters, but she does find a fat cat.

Characters: Eleanor Lamb, Elliot Nelson, Augustus Sinclair, Gloria Parson, Billy Parson, staff of The Sinclair Deluxe, Grace Holloway, Subject Delta; mentions of Sofia Lamb, Amir, Harry Parson, Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine, Sullivan, Splicers.

Pairings: None.

Warnings: mentions of assault, blood, theft, parental death, death, child-kidnapping, blood consumption, murder; implied tobacco usage and alcohol consumption.

Notes: So Eleanor evidently lived in The Sinclair Deluxe during the time Grace was caring for her, which I’m assuming was when Sinclair still owned the place. Sooo...I’m sure she probably saw him around once or twice at least? Anyways, don’t follow strangers, kids - not all of ‘em end up being your future dad’s future friend.

All material belongs to Irrational Games.

Part 1 of 3 of my BioShock 2 fic series, Wherever Life Takes You.

Link to fic on AO3.

…

Eleanor is all smiles and giggles once she finally makes it out of Aunt Gracie’s apartment, having carefully snuck through the door while her aunt had been distracted by her radio programs. She hugs her beloved hack tool to her chest, blue eyes already darting around as soon as she’s out the door.

She’s been waiting for this chance, to finally explore her new home. Perhaps she shouldn’t be sneaking out anymore - Mum is no longer around to stop her from playing with Amir and the other kids, though she can’t yet determine if Aunt Gracie is going to do the same - but she can’t help herself. 

She enjoys her independence, of getting to run around wherever she likes. Normally, of course, she accepts the company of the children she’s befriended, but there’s nothing wrong with doing some solo exploration. Perhaps, if she manages to get back to Amir, she can invite him over for tea and show him the nooks and crannies of the hotel she now lives in. 

Eleanor comes to a stop, already distracted when she hears the dim noise of a radio playing and two voices that talk over it, alongside the clattering of what sounds like metal and plastic hitting each other.

She makes herself small, shoulders hunched and back curving, in order to hide herself from view as she seeks out the cause of the noises; she finds what she’s looking for when she looks across the way, at the corner opposite the entryway to Aunt Gracie’s apartment. She hides behind the pillar in the middle of the railing, alternating between going to her tiptoes and peeking over the top of the fence and ducking down to look through the bars.

There’re two men over there, one sitting between the radio that’s crooning away and an open crate, the other standing in front of the first man, hands on his own hips as they chat. 

The man in the wheelchair is turned away from her, so she sees the second man better: he’s portly and has dark, slicked-back hair, with an orange and red diagonally-striped tie at his throat, glasses on a cord around his neck and braces hooked over his shoulders to hold up his trousers. 

Eleanor tilts her head, pointing her ear at the men as she tries to hear what they’re saying.

“ - just sit here, listening to the radio while I put ‘em together. I tell ya, you’ve given me something to do when the evenings are slow, so I guess I gotta thank you for that.”

The second man looks into the crate, hand on its edge. “Well, looks like you’re doin’ a swift job, which I appreciate wholeheartedly.” He pats the crate. “Finish up this box, then it’ll be payday.”

The first man gives him a mock salute and the second man tells him he’ll see him later, then turns on his heel and leaves, walking down the hall opposite Eleanor’s.

“See you later,” the first man says, then adds, just loud enough for Eleanor to decipher, “sucker.”

Eleanor gives a gasp and looks to the second man to see if he’s heard; she can’t tell from this angle, he’s too far away.

Eleanor watches the second man walk down the corridor and off into the hotel proper. Eleanor runs down the hall after him, huffing in irritation at the uncomfortable shoes Aunt Gracie’s got her wearing. They’re black and flat and they slip against her white socks at the heel; she thinks they might be a size too large. She has to coordinate her steps to keep her shoes from falling off; the only thing keeping her from throwing them away and running barefoot is the knowledge that they had been a gift and Aunt Gracie can’t afford too many nice things. She doesn’t want to upset her; she loves Aunt Gracie, and Aunt Gracie loves her. 

It’s why she likes dressing her up, too, though Eleanor doesn’t mind that as much. The knee-length gingham dress is coloured like grape juice (which will do wonders, Eleanor imagines, if she accidentally spills actual grape juice on it) and nicely matches the Alice band in her hair, and the short-sleeved, white shirt she’s got on underneath is comfortably soft on her skin. Aunt Gracie was nice enough to tie her hair in little pigtails too, just as she likes it to be.

Eleanor freezes when she’s about to pass by the elevator and sees the camera there, turning back and forth, whirring as a warning to those about to pass by its gaze.

Luckily, Eleanor is prepared for this, and she grins at the chance to use her hack tool again. 

It takes a few moments from the second she shoots the camera with a remote hack dart, but she finally gets the camera to blink and chime, under her control now, then she happily skips by it. 

Had she needed to hack the camera? She doesn’t know, but she can’t risk being spotted when she’s exploring!

Eleanor runs into the hall lined with the doors of tenants’s rooms, finding the man to be gone. Her grin falls and she looks around, trying to figure out if he’d gone into a room or not. She wants to know what he’d been discussing with the man sitting in the wheelchair.

Eleanor goes wandering down the hall, looking left and right. If she can’t find the man again, she’s content to just explore, but even she knows she can’t just waltz into someone’s home, so she doesn’t try to go through any of the available doors. 

A couple of the tenants walk in and out of their rooms and Eleanor makes sure to peek in before the doors slide shut; one of them - a sweaty-looking man in a waistcoat - stops and looks at her confusedly, eyebrow arched and gaze silently questioning her being on her own and what her purpose is being a peeping tom, but Eleanor doesn’t stop to chat. 

She just glances at him, smiles kindly, waves then skips away. He confusedly waves back.

She makes her way down to the second floor, jumping down the steps one by one, counting them as she lands. She counts thirteen altogether, looks back up the staircase and swears she’s miscounted, so she clambers back up and counts them again. She finds she hasn't miscounted, but she knows she can’t prove that without a third total, so she goes up to the top yet again and counts them. 

Nope - thirteen steps. One is crooked, though, so she thinks its shape might’ve distracted her when she’d landed on it and gotten her numbers jumbled in her head briefly, confusing her. She hopes they fix that soon; seems like a health hazard. It doesn’t help, of course, that she’d had to put some of her brain power into reminding herself to flex her toes so her slip-on shoes don’t slip off.

Eleanor turns the corner and scarpers down the next hall of doors, then stops with a small gasp when she sees the man from before standing outside one of them. She makes herself small again, going over to a section of wall that juts out in a slight pillar and pressing herself against it. 

It’s the best hiding place she has; there’s a Circus of Values nearby, but it’s too close to them and she’d be too noticeable if she tried to use that as a shield. Here, she’s far away enough that she isn’t immediately within anybody’s line of sight. 

Eleanor tilts her head to listen to him, as he and one of the tenants are talking.

It’s a lady with curly hair and a dark jumper on, with her shirt’s collar peeking out. There’s a little boy standing with her - shorter but wider than Eleanor, he’s younger than her - with blond hair and a bow tie at his throat. He clings to his mother’s skirt as she talks to the man from before, who stands with his hands on his hips again.

“Harry will be here soon,” the lady says, desperation in her tone, “I know he will! And when he does, we’ll be able to afford the rent better, it’s just...I just -”

“Well, ma’am, I don’t see him,” the man says; now that he’s closer, Eleanor can better hear the Southern drawl in his voice, “so for the time bein’ - per the agreement - payment will hafta come from you, I’m afraid. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the concept of rentin’ to you, you’re a brainy one.”

“I’m just - I’m not sure if I can give it to you by tomorrow,” the woman replies, holding her hands together. “I don’t get paid until the end of the week, and Billy needed to see the dentist just yesterday so we had to pay for that, and...and with Harry missing, we don’t have the funds from his book shop, and -”

The man holds up a hand to silence her. 

“Now, I understand that all fine an’ well,” the man says. “Of course, you gotta put your young one first,” he smiles down at the boy - Billy, he must be - who hides behind his mother’s skirt, “but I don’t run a charity here. And I got bills ta pay too, hence me bumpin’ the deadline forward. So,” he perks up, smiling wider at her now, “I’ll expect the cash tomorrow - no later’n lunch, if you could.” 

The woman tries to speak again, but the man wishes her good day and turns on his heel to leave her doorstep, making his merry way down the hall. 

The woman watches him go, spluttering nonsense that’s supposed to be her attempt at calling him back, but the words are lost in her rising despair over the situation and the tears that very quickly well up in her eyes. She drops her face into her hands to gasp through the sobs that fight to escape her.

The little boy looks up at his mother, then spots Eleanor peeking at them. He stares at her, blinking his big eyes, then waves shyly.

Eleanor waves back and smiles encouragingly.

The boy smiles back, bashful, then looks up at his mother as she escorts him back into the apartment and lets the door shut behind them.

Eleanor stares at the closed door for a moment, then looks down the hall at the Y-shape the man’s braces make on his retreating back. She doesn’t even need to think about following him; she’s immediately stepping out of hiding and jogging to catch up with him. Her slip-on shoes - while remaining uncomfortable for her - fortunately make hardly any noise at all on the flooring of the hotel. She hugs her hack tool close, making sure the handle doesn’t rattle against the wrist attachment.

She follows the man out of the hall, where he apparently decides he can’t be bothered to take the stairs down to the ground floor, as he gets into the elevator. 

Eleanor picks up speed then; before the man can turn around to face the doors and punch in his floor on the listed buttons, Eleanor has snuck into the elevator beside him, practically ducked under his hip to avoid getting noticed. When he does turn around to select his floor, she adjusts her position so that she stands at his heel, far enough behind him to stay hidden.

Luckily for her, he never so much as looks down, just stares ahead - though, he does briefly look up at the elevator’s ceiling to frown and mutter, “Gotta swap out this song…” as he listens to the elevator music.

Eleanor presses a hand over her mouth, shaking with giggles that she adamantly forces to stay quiet. 

He hasn’t even noticed her! How silly of him - she’s right there!

The elevator reaches the ground floor and the man steps out as soon as the doors open, unknowingly with Eleanor following along closely behind him.

They’re heading out of The Sinclair Deluxe’s apartment block now, passing through into the reception area where Aunt Gracie had talked to the lady at the desk about Eleanor when she’d first brought Eleanor to live with her, after Mummy had to go away. 

Eleanor gives that lady a wave and a smile to greet her, and the lady does a double-take at her, then looks back and forth between her and the man she’s following, confusion dominating her expression.

The man, luckily, doesn’t notice, not even when he briefly glances at the lady and waves a hand vaguely as a goodbye. He takes the rightmost exit out of The Sinclair Deluxe, taking the tunnel out before heading toward the plaza at the entrance to Pauper’s Drop.

Eleanor, of course, follows him.

Still intent on exploring, Eleanor looks around herself continuously as she follows the man, staying close enough to him that she doesn’t lose track of him and so that people assume her to be with him rather than just a wandering child. That way, nobody tries to play good samaritan and ask if the poor little girl is lost and if she needs help returning to her carer. She does get the occasional odd look from passersby who might know the man, but nobody approaches her, which is the good thing here.

She goes on her tiptoes to try and see through the window of the Fishbowl Diner, stares at the plate of towered pancakes printed on a poster above a booth and licks her lips, then she hastily follows the man once she sees some distance has grown between them while she’s been distracted. 

They head toward the Town Square, the man taking the leftmost staircase at the edge of the plaza. Eleanor briefly struggles to follow him, her little legs and misfit shoes making it more difficult to climb down the stairs compared to his easy strides, but she manages after only tripping twice and quickly jogs to catch up.

He takes a left, heads toward the building there, and Eleanor looks up to read the neon sign that reads: THE HAMILTON. Underneath, there’s the added OFFICE SPACE FOR RENT.

The man goes through the doors and Eleanor follows quickly behind, then he’s ascending a staircase up to the second floor, and once again Eleanor struggles to keep up. These steps are wider than the ones at the hotel and her little legs mean she has to shuffle on each one in order to step up to the next. She even ends up using her hand to assist her in climbing, practically crawling up the stairs, but she forces herself to hurry so she doesn’t lose him. 

The man goes heading through an archway and down a corridor, toward the door at the end of the hall. He takes a card from his pocket, presses it into the metal slot on the wall, something clicks, then the door slides open for him and he steps in - as does Eleanor, before the door has a chance to shut.

They’re in an office now, a wide room with standing partitions cornering off a small waiting area from the rest of the office, a single couch there for visitors to sit on should they need to. The partitions have small windows in them, giving the illusion that the closed off section is another room entirely; it’d work if not for the gap in the fake wall, which the man steps through to go to the office proper.

Opposite the door they’d just walked through is the entrance to a bathroom, which Eleanor goes to her tiptoes to try and see over the couch (just out of curiosity, she knows what a bathroom is), then she looks over as the man takes a seat at his desk, now facing her.

For a moment, she’s scared she’s about to be spotted before she’s ready to show herself and curls inward, preparing for the reaction she might get, but the man never so much as looks in her direction. 

Instead, he’s opening a drawer and taking out a folder, from which he then retrieves several papers. He lays them out on the table, looks over them, then hums and goes back to the drawer. He takes out a pile of paper, slides a sheet from the top, then slides that into the typewriter to his right on the desk.

The man picks up the glasses hanging around his neck, slips them on, then goes pressing at the keys of his typewriter.

Eleanor watches him for a few seconds, interested in what he’s now doing. She figures it might be time for her to reveal her genius sense of hiding and following, since she now can’t snoop without him noticing; it’s probably best if she shows herself rather than him finding her first. At least, it’s more polite.

He doesn’t notice her come into the office space, her slip-on shoes make barely any noise as she pads across the room to him, watching him closely. 

The man continues typing, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, and doesn’t even look up as Eleanor walks right up to his desk, her hack tool still hugged to herself with one arm. She’s too short to do anything but peer at him over the top of the desk’s surface, little fingers of her free hand holding the edge.

“Hello,” she says simply.

The man jolts in shock, letting out a yelp, and Eleanor giggles at him. She’s never heard a man make that sound before, and she hadn’t thought herself especially frightening; he must be easy to scare.

The man looks up toward the door, looks around the waiting area, then double-takes as spots her big, blue eyes watching him over the top of his desk, and he meets her gaze, his own expression turning a mixture of confusion and discomfort. He slides his glasses from his face, holding them by the temple between his finger and thumb, close to his collarbone as they’re still attached to the cord around his neck.

“...Afternoon,” he says to her slowly, clearly perturbed by her presence. “What’re you doin’ in here?”

She doesn’t think she’s that intimidating, is she? Nevertheless, she does her best to look innocent and polite, as to not disturb him further. Perhaps he’s just of the jittery sort.

“I followed you,” Eleanor replies.

“That doesn’t answer my question.” The man tips his head forward. “You ain’t s’pposed to be in here, honey. Now,” he shoos her with a hand motion, “why don’t you run along? Back to your momma or whoever it is that cares for you.”

“My Aunt Gracie.”

The man smiles thinly, tone turning slightly sarcastic. “Your Aunt Gracie. I’m sure she’s probably lookin’ for ya. Wouldn’t wanna make her worry now.”

“I don’t think she is,” Eleanor says as casually as talking about the weather. “She’s listening to her radio programs right now. She always listens to them at one o’clock, every afternoon!” She tells him this like she’s practised it in the mirror, then cups a hand beside her lips and whispers to him, “I’m supposed to be doing my homework right now.”

“Is that right,” the man states rather than asks. “Well, I’m doin’ my homework right now, so I’d appreciate the thinkin’ room, if you’d be so kind.”

He gestures toward the door.

He’s made a mistake in talking about what he’s up to, since Eleanor's been wondering that since she walked in. 

Instead of leaving as he’d been implying he’d like her to, Eleanor goes on the very tips of her toes, craning her neck to try and view the papers on his desk. They’ve got writing on them in blue pen ink - his handwriting, most likely - but she can’t make out the words. She tilts her head, angling it to peek around the used ashtray that blocks her view of one of the forms.

The man follows her gaze, then slides one of the pieces of paper toward himself, keeping it from her view.

“What sort of homework are you doing?” Eleanor asks, looking back up at him; if he won’t show her the paper, perhaps he’ll tell her about it.

“Grown-up homework,” the man replies, arching an eyebrow at her. “Sorta stuff you wouldn’t understand.”

Eleanor purses her lips around her smile. 

Adults like to claim she won’t understand things, but she’s clever, she understands things even some adults wouldn’t. She has her books and her maths and her sciences, her chalkboard constantly covered in equations. She’d like to ask the man if he would understand anything on it, to challenge him. 

Even if he did, she would smile; it would be nice, she thinks, to have someone to do her homework with. Mr. Diary never gives his two cents on anything.

“I bet I would understand it,” Eleanor says cheekily. “Quite clearly, too.”

The man keeps his eyebrow raised at her, then cocks his head. 

“Well, I’d invite you to have a gander, but this here, little lady, is my business. Didn’t anybody ever give you word o’ caution about bein’ nosy?”

Eleanor gives it some genuine thought, then replies, “I don’t think so.” 

“Well, then, you can take that one to heart. It’s a valuable lesson to learn, especially for a rambunctious little one like yourself.”

He doesn’t elaborate upon what he means by that, and he apparently expects her to leave because he puts his glasses back on and picks up a pen, sliding one of those papers toward himself so that he can scratch his signature onto it.

Eleanor tries to read the signature, but it’s all erratic and the letters all mould together; it’s especially hard to read upside-down, and especially hard to read when she can’t even see the top of his desk properly.

The man’s eyes flick up, his gaze finding her, and he frowns and sighs slowly, which she doesn’t respond to, for she’s busy right now.

She sets her hack tool on the floor to free her hands, then huffs with the effort of trying to hoist herself upwards, to see his signature, but that proves fruitless, as does bouncing on the balls of her feet. She presses the sole of her shoe against the desk’s side, digging her little fingers into the edge. She hops on the foot still on the floor and, between the grip she has and the foot pushing against the side, she manages to get herself a little higher into the air, enough that she briefly sees the top of the desk, before she falls back down.

“Hey - hey, now.”

Eleanor looks up, eyes widening at the scolding tone he now has. She drops her foot from the side of his desk, but keeps her hands on its edge.

He has a hand extended out in a gesture to tell her to stop. The man sighs again and removes his glasses, letting go of them entirely and leaving them to dangle on their cord, then he forces out a sweeter tone than he’d like to use.

“Sweetie pie, this is not a playground, and it ain’t a place for you to be. So how about you run along outta my office and -”

“Why did you make that other lady cry?” Eleanor asks, mind bouncing back to what she’d wanted to know earlier.

The man’s mouth hovers open, the words he’d been preparing to say disappearing as his mind temporarily blanks, unable to keep up with how quickly the topic shifts, then he shuts it, frowns deeply and blinks once slowly.

“Excuse you?” he says.

“The lady you were talking to, back at the hotel. She cried after you walked away, after you told her to make her payments and to put them on your desk before tomorrow lunchtime. You must have heard her.” 

Eleanor tilts her head.

The man stares at her, then shakes his head. “It wasn’t my intention to make her cry. I was just remindin’ her that she had payments to make, that was all.”

“But she said she couldn’t afford it.”

The man shrugs his shoulders. “Well, honey, I don’t have a dog in that hunt.”

Eleanor’s face scrunches up in a frown. 

Doesn’t he realise that’s not a nice thing to do? Surely, he can make some sort of arrangement with that lady so she doesn’t cry over not having a lot of money.

She goes to question him about this, but the man raises his eyebrow at her and asks, “You followed me from the hotel, did ya?”

Eleanor nods. “Yes. I saw you talking to that other man, too; the one with the box and the radio. Did you know he called you an unkind name behind your back?”

The man, surprisingly, smirks. “I did.”

Eleanor’s frown turns confused. “Why didn’t you tell him off for it? You should have told him not to call you that. Or you should’ve tried fighting him - that would make him stop.”

The man looks briefly bewildered but amused at her naivete. “Trust me, honey, I’m used to people callin’ me names when they think my ears have switched off.”

Eleanor’s expression falls into surprise, then sympathy. 

Poor thing, getting picked on like that. Some of her friends have gotten bullied, too; heck, she’d met Amir because he was bullying a smaller boy, and she’d punched him in the face to get him to stop. Nothing says new friendship like a bleeding nose.

Maybe the man should’ve punched the other man in the nose, maybe they would’ve become friends too.

The man doesn’t seem to dwell on her sympathy, just shrugs a shoulder casually and looks back down at his papers, putting his glasses back on as he does so.

Eleanor watches him closely, realises she still doesn’t know the man’s name, and decides this must be rectified at once. And she isn’t being nosy this time - she just wants to know his name. But climbing isn’t working very well for her, she’s too little to grab at anything to help herself up and especially too little to get a leg up, and his signature has proved too messy to understand anyway, so she settles for the more polite method of getting information.

“Who are you?” Eleanor asks, peering at him again with her big, blue eyes.

The man looks up from his papers. His head tilts forward as his eyebrow lifts, his hazel gaze finding her blue one over the top of his glasses and staring. His stare on her is dry, like he can’t believe she would ask such a question, like she should know already.

“Who am I?” he asks slowly.

Eleanor thinks that’s a bit silly. Does he know his name? She’s starting to have her doubts.

“Yes,” she says, a slight giggle in her tone. “Your name. What is it?”

His look remains dry, but then it flicks over to the door and his lips twitch upwards. He leans his elbows on his desk so that he can better see her, looking her up and down, assessing her.

“You know how to read yet, sweetie pie?” the man asks, looking her in the eye.

“I know how to read,” Eleanor says indignantly.

“Hm.” The man looks like he has his own doubts. He points out the door. “And I suppose you’ve seen the sign on the outside of the hotel up yonder?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know what it says?”

“The Sinclair Deluxe.”

There’s a brief flicker of surprise in the man’s gaze on her, like he genuinely hadn’t expected her to know, and she’s surprised him. Good. She likes doing that.

“That’s good. Now, I’d say let’s play this like Rumpelstiltskin, but I reckon I’m nicer’n that, and I certainly have no interest in your firstborn,” he gives a soft chuckle with his words, “so I’ll give ya a couple o’ clues. The hotel was your first. Your second,” he nods towards the door, “is the sign outside this very office that might just nudge you a li’l more in the right direction.”

Eleanor perks up immediately, turning on her heel and bounding out of the office area. 

Behind her, the man takes off his glasses, gets up from his chair and follows her, reversing their earlier dynamic, his hands placed casually on his hips. As they near the door, he reaches into his pocket.

The door immediately opens for Eleanor when she reaches it and she leaps out of the doorway excitedly, looks left and right at the walls adjacent to the door and finds no sign there telling her his name. She turns confusedly to him, tilting her head in a silent question of where this sign is supposed to be.

The man smiles at her - and the door promptly shuts between them, the lock clicking.

“Wait!” Eleanor exclaims, one hand out in a feeble attempt to stop it.

Eleanor’s mouth falls open in surprise, looking the door up and down as she comes to accept what just happened: he’d tricked her. He’d lied and tricked her, and now he’s locked her out. Why would he do that? They were just having a conversation! How rude of him!

Eleanor folds her arms, pouting grumpily at the closed door.

He’d used a genetic key to unlock and lock the door, so she won’t be able to do the same unless she can get it from him - and she can’t do that because the door is in the way. 

Eleanor surveys the area - there doesn’t seem to be a vent she can crawl into or any sort of nook or cranny she can use to get through the wall - and double-takes as she spots the plaque above the door, so easily missed when she’d been following the man around. She squints to read it, given how small she is and the cursive it’s written in.

A. Sinclair.

Eleanor gasps softly. 

His name! He hadn’t lied after all, there really is a sign with his name on out here, she’d just been too small to see it. She knows the name too: this is the man Aunt Gracie talks about, the one she refers to when she’s grumbling angrily at the envelopes she gets in the post. She calls him things like ‘fat cat’ (which Eleanor struggles to see as an insult - cats are great - but she can tell it is one because of Aunt Gracie’s tone) and a snake and...another word that Eleanor isn’t allowed to use. She’s too young, she’s been told, to use profanity, and she doesn’t think she was even supposed to have overheard Aunt Gracie using language like that.

Still, the sign is there, so perhaps he isn’t a liar, but he’d still been very rude. That’s one mystery solved, now for the second. This would be much easier if she could just hack her way in -

Wait...Her hack tool!

Eleanor gasps again, this time more urgently, and realises she’s left it on the floor in Mr. Sinclair’s office, which could be really bad. She isn’t supposed to have it, she’d had to hide it from Mum and it’s very likely that other adults will take issue with her having it too, especially Aunt Gracie. If Mr. Sinclair sees it, will she get into trouble?

Maybe, but she has no choice but to reveal it now. Perhaps they can play this like Rumpelstiltskin: if she says his name, maybe he’ll give her what she wants by letting her back into the room.

Remember your manners now, Eleanor.

“Mr. Sinclair?” she says, knocking at the door repeatedly. She leans close so that she’ll be better heard through it. “Mr. Sinclair? Mr. Sinclaaiirrr?”

“Well, aren’t you a regular little Holmes?” comes his voice through the door - sounding further away now so he must be back at his desk - and his tone doesn’t present the same impressed attitude as his words do. He almost sounds sarcastic. “I do believe there’s a private investigator upstairs that just might like to see you as part of his trade. Should go an’ ask ‘im.” 

That’d be nice, Eleanor thinks, but she’s not sure if she has enough free time for work right now.

Eleanor keeps knocking at the door. “Mr. Sinclaaiirrr? Mr. Sinclaaaiirr?...I need to be let back in, please…Mr. Sinclaaaiir? You have something that belongs to me, Mr. Sinclair, I’d just like it back, pleeaase.”

There comes a beat of silence, then the creaking of his chair as, evidently, he stands from it again. 

Eleanor feels her heartbeat begin to pick up speed as there comes more silence, her mind playing out every possible scenario, most of which include Mr. Sinclair yelling at her for having a hack tool, telling Aunt Gracie, then the word getting back to Mum, and then she’ll be punished again for the hacking and the sneaking out and -

The door opens again and Mr. Sinclair stands there, frowning lightly down at her, one hand still holding his genetic key in the lock on the wall, the other cradling her hack tool against his chest.

Eleanor stares up at him, expecting the yelling.

Mr. Sinclair doesn’t yell, however; he holds it up before himself, out of her reach, and nods at it.

“Now,” he says slowly, eyebrow arched at her, “where did you get this, kid?”

Eleanor folds her arms, half for the purpose of hugging herself and half to appear more bold. 

“That’s a secret, and you aren’t supposed to tell secrets,” she replies. Eleanor holds out her hands. “May I have it back now, please?”

Mr. Sinclair glances at it, then back to her. “This ain’t a toy, you know, honey.”

“I know,” Eleanor replies. “But I’ve made it into one. It’s very easy to use.”

“Is it now?” Mr. Sinclair asks.

“Yes.” Eleanor straightens a bit, glad for the chance to prove herself. Maybe if she appears more grown-up, Mr. Sinclair won’t see a reason to tattle on her. “It’s all just bits and bobs, isn’t it? So it’s just about making friends with every one of those bits and bobs, and then the security is your friend too.”

Mr. Sinclair regards her with equal parts confusion and amusement, and he hums. 

“Would you like me to show you?” Eleanor asks. There’s a health station machine on the wall behind him that would be easy to hack, she thinks.

Mr. Sinclair lets out a sound that’s half a scoff and half a chuckle, a disbelieving amusement to him.

“Ah - I know how to use one o’ these gadgets,” he says, “thank you very much.”

Eleanor’s face falls - there goes her chance to prove herself, she can’t impress him if he already knows how to use one. She reaches for the hack tool again, even though it’s far too high for her to reach. 

Mr. Sinclair doesn’t adjust the height at which he holds it, so Eleanor jumps to try and grab it, fails, then lands on both feet and scowls at him.

She stomps her foot and folds her arms. “You’re stealing.”

Mr. Sinclair regards her thoughtfully, then turns his head and looks her out of the corner of his eye, both of which narrow.

“You ever hack anythin’ back at the hotel, honey?” he asks.

Eleanor’s expression immediately melts into fear as she thinks back to the security camera she tampered with. She shrinks back before him out of instinct, her body language betraying her, doing the opposite of what her mouth does.

She lies. “No…”

Mr. Sinclair raises both eyebrows, head tilting toward her now. “Is that a fib?”

Eleanor shuffles her feet uncomfortably. She won’t dignify that with an answer.

Mr. Sinclair stares at her, turning his head so that he’ll look at her out of the corner of his eye again. His lips purse, then he asks of her, “What did you say your auntie’s name was?”

Eleanor feels her skin go up in goosebumps, the anxiety getting to her. 

“Gracie…” she hesitantly replies.

“And does she know you’re in possession of this fine contraption?”

“...Maybe.”

Mr. Sinclair tilts his head, smiling knowingly. “Maybe not, right?”

Eleanor bites her lip.

Mr. Sinclair stares for a moment, then his eyes widen, and he puts his free hand to his chin thoughtfully, mouth falling open in surprise.

“Well, hang on just a second here...Could you be talkin’ about...that Aunt Gracie…?” 

“Do you know her?” Eleanor asks worriedly, arms unfolding.

Mr. Sinclair nods. “I sure do.” 

He turns on his heel and goes walking away from her, through the partition and back into the office space. 

“I also know her phone number…”

Eleanor gasps and goes racing after him, stopping in the fake doorway made by the partition. 

Mr. Sinclair’s standing by his desk, back to cradling her hack tool against his chest with one hand. The other, he uses to pick up the receiver of the black rotary phone opposite his typewriter on his desk, lifting it to his ear. He tucks it between his head and shoulder.

“Think I should inform her o’ this,” Mr. Sinclair says, then looks to Eleanor, “for your own safety, of course.”

He watches her as he slowly moves one finger towards the phone’s dial to put in Aunt Gracie’s number.

“N-No! Wait! Please, don’t!” Eleanor exclaims, hands out in an attempt to stop him.

Luckily for her, Mr. Sinclair doesn’t touch the dial, just raises his eyebrows and stares at her. 

“Please,” Eleanor asks, feeling a prickling sensation under her eyes as fearful tears threaten to well up. Her voice cracks, which is embarrassing when it’s in front of someone who isn’t Mum or Aunt Gracie; Mum had told her she’s better than that, but she can’t help it. “Please, don’t tell her. I’m sorry that I hacked the camera at the hotel, I can put it back to normal - just please, please, don’t tell her.”

She sniffles, and Mr. Sinclair’s stare on her isn’t so hard anymore, his expression relaxes, and he picks the receiver from his shoulder, returning it to its cradle.

“Alright, alright,” he says, “take it easy.”

Eleanor sniffles again, watching him as he steps around his desk, then leans back against it, free hand clutching its edge and tailbone pressed against it. His legs are stretched out before him, heels on the floor, looking casual.

“Now, why don’t we figure out a sorta quid pro quo between us, hm? A deal, that is,” Mr. Sinclair says. “I won’t tell ‘er - if,” he punctuates it purposely, with an index finger raised, seeing Eleanor open her mouth to respond, “you let me borrow it for just a little while.”

Eleanor’s brow furrows. “Borrow it?”

“Mm-hm.” He turns it over in his hands, observing it. 

“What do you want it for?”

Mr. Sinclair’s eyes flick up, he stares at the wall behind her for a moment, then his mouth twitches upwards at the edges and he looks down at her, his lips setting in a pout. 

“D’you remember that fella who called me a sucker behind my back?” he says.

Eleanor nods.

“Well, he stole somethin’ from me a while ago - took it straight outta my apartment, quick as a flash, ‘fore I could even gather what had happened! It’s why he was callin’ me names: tauntin’ me about what ‘e did.” He puts a hand to his chest. “I’ve been givin’ him jobs, hopin’ the cash will soften him up an’ convince him to give it back to me, but he hasn’t. Now, it’d mean an awful lot to me if you jus’ let me borrow this here device so I can go an’ get it back myself. Reckon I know where he’s hid it, but the security there ain’t as kind to me as the hotel’s is, ya understand.”

“What did he take from you?”

Mr. Sinclair is silent for a beat before he replies, “Precious heirloom. Been in my family for years - belonged to my momma an’ her momma before that, and so on and so on. One of the few prized possessions I own, and I just can’t sleep well at night imaginin’ it in someone else’s hands.”

Eleanor’s mouth falls open. 

Well, no wonder he wants the tool so bad, if he’s been the victim of thieving. Eleanor supposes that’s reasonable, but something doesn’t feel right here.

Eleanor frowns and folds her arms as she reminds him. “You were going to tell on me.” 

He can’t be on her side if he’s also against her, after all.

“Well - for your safety, honey,” Mr. Sinclair says. He holds the hack tool up to gesture to it. “Now, you gotta understand: I’ve never known a kid like you to be able to handle these things. Most adults don’t understand how to use ‘em, but you? Well,” he tucks the tool against his chest as he points to her, swinging his hand a little, “you ain’t even at double digits yet an’ you’re hackin’ things like it’s your very own invention. Gotta forgive me for bein’ a little cautious, but,” he holds up his hand in surrender, “I can see when I’ve underestimated a person.”

Mr. Sinclair’s pout returns and he puts his hand to his heart. “I’m awful sorry I stole it from ya, honey. Was entirely on impulse, I just...I just picture that fella you saw with my momma’s heirloom, an’ I get all…” He sniffs, then shakes his head. “But I ain’t usually the lootin’ and snatchin’ kind o’ fella, I assure you.”

Well, doesn’t that just speak to Eleanor in volumes? Missing something of his mum’s, just like she is - though what she’s missing is not an item, but simply her mother’s presence and her voice. Her heart squeezes in sympathy for Mr. Sinclair, but something still doesn’t feel right. This is, after all, the man Aunt Gracie criticizes every chance she gets, and there must be a reason for that. Eleanor reckons she might know the reason; he’d shown it to her earlier.

Eleanor straightens her spine, letting her frown deepen. “You were very rude to me. It hurt my feelings.”

Mr. Sinclair straightens too, his eyebrows briefly rising, then he considers this and bobs his head in a few, gracious nods.

“Why...You’re right, honey,” he says, “I was rather unpleasant, wasn’t I? I musta forgotten my manners, and there’s really no excuse for doin’ such a thing as that, now, is there? Shame on me.” He puts his hand to his chest again, humble. “I offer my sincerest apologies to you, sweetie pie. Certainly won’t let it happen again.”

Eleanor stares, contemplating.

Well...he is apologising, and he is admitting he did wrong. This isn’t the first time she’s had a bully apologise and turn over a new leaf in how they treat her, Amir had done the very same after their fight, and she had apologised in turn to him for making his nose red. Now, they’re good friends. 

Aunt Gracie speaks poorly of Mr. Sinclair, but Eleanor reckons apologising isn’t something a fat cat or a snake or a...the other word would do, so...perhaps Aunt Gracie hasn’t given him a chance? Maybe she doesn’t know him well enough - had they ever had a conversation like the one he and Eleanor are having right now? Eleanor thinks not.

She watches him for a few more seconds, twisting back and forth at the waist as she ponders, then she nods.

“Alright,” she says finally, “I forgive you - but only because you said you’re sorry.”

Mr. Sinclair smiles. “And apologies just make the world go ‘round, don’t they?”

“Well, no - gravity and other forces do that.”

Mr. Sinclair barks out a laugh. “So they do. Now, ah,” he shakes her hack tool at her, “about your piratin’ doohickey here…?”

Eleanor blinks like she’s just remembered he’s got that in his possession, then ponders on this issue some. 

...She supposes there’s no harm in loaning it out to him. Evidently, she doesn’t have as much need for it here in Pauper’s Drop as she had done with Mum, given how easily she’d gotten out of Aunt Gracie’s apartment. There isn’t a heavy line of security like with Mum, she’d just waltzed out without a care; she’s not even sure if she’d needed to hack that camera, it hadn’t been specifically looking for her, after all. 

It seems freedom is hers as long as she’s in Aunt Gracie’s care, which means her hack tool is free too - free to help Mr. Sinclair in his plight.

“And you will give it back to me, won’t you?” Eleanor asks. “When Aunt Gracie’s not around, so she won’t see?”

Mr. Sinclair holds up a hand. “Scout’s honour.”

Eleanor stares at him, then she nods, her lips gently twitching up into a friendly smile.

“Alright, then. So you can retrieve your mum’s belongings.”

Mr. Sinclair gives a relieved sigh and pats his own heart. “Thank you, sweet pea. That is such a weight off my back. Why, aren’t you just the little angel watchin’ over my shoulder?”

Mr. Sinclair picks himself off of his desk and starts to walk around it. 

As he goes, Eleanor steps further into the room, sure now that she isn’t in any trouble with him. She tilts her head, remembering then what she’d wanted to know when she saw the plaque.

“What’s your first name?” she asks, bobbling up to his desk. “The sign outside says it starts with an A. What is it?”

He stops at the corner of his desk, briefly looks pensive, then replies, “Augustus. The name’s Augustus Sinclair, sweetie pie. Esquire.”

Eleanor smiles - that’s a nice name, she thinks - but then something occurs to her, and she can almost hear Mum’s disappointed sigh at how slow she’d been to realise it: if the sign on the hotel has his name, and he’s able to boss around the people who live there, then that must mean -

Eleanor points at him with one tiny finger as she exclaims, “You’re the man who owns our hotel!”

Augustus - she’s going to call him that instead of Mr. Sinclair or any of that posh nonsense because she likes that name - gives a short chuckle, fused with a disbelieving scoff. He tilts his head, and his look is back to that amused one he’d given her earlier, when she’d suggested he beat up that other man.

“Ah - No,” Augustus says, smiling properly now,  “I own my hotel.” He prods himself in the chest with one finger, then uses the same finger to point back at her. “You, little lady, don’t own anythin’.” 

He finishes walking around his desk, then doubles over and unceremoniously tosses the hack tool under there - into a safe, it sounds like, judging by the metallic clattering sound. He slams the safe shut, then sets the code.

Eleanor jogs around his desk, coming over to have a look, and finds he has two safes under his desk. The one on the right, nearest to him, is now of course shut tight, while the one closest to her is open, so she goes steps up to it to peek inside.

There’s a small collection of bottles in there, and it occurs to Eleanor that she hasn’t had a drink since Aunt Gracie had filled her cup with apple juice at lunch today, so she reaches for one. She doesn’t know what they are - all she sees of the label, from the angle she’s at, is something called Sinclair Spirits - but a drink’s a drink.

“May I have one of those?” she asks.

The safe snaps shut suddenly, making Eleanor gasp and snatch back her hand before her fingers can get caught; Augustus has used his foot to push the safe’s door closed.

“Not unless you can pay for it,” Augustus says, a dry joke, then he cocks his head. “But, even then, the answer, sweetie, is no. That ain’t your kinda bubbly.”

Eleanor looks up at him and realises he means they’re alcoholic drinks - adult drinks that she can’t have.

“Oh,” she says, smiling cheekily, as though it’s a secret that he has adult drinks. Maybe it is - they are in a safe, after all.

Augustus raises an eyebrow at her.

Her childish mind already searching to find something else to do, Eleanor goes over to his chair and starts to climb onto it (it is, after all, a good way to see atop his desk). She’s quick enough that she’s on her hands and knees on the seat when he jolts and steps around the chair.

“No, no, no,” he says, his hands going under her armpits. He lifts her from the chair, immediately setting her on her feet on the floor. “Not on my chair, please. Thank you.”

Eleanor looks up at him, then smiles.

Augustus gives her a tired sort of look, taking a seat himself.

“Can I sit on your knee?” Eleanor asks, already going over to him, and she immediately stops when he suddenly holds up a hand.

“No.” Augustus puts his left hand down and rests his right elbow on his desk, hand holding his chin and cheek. “Do you make a habit of sneakin’ out like this?”

“Yes.” Eleanor’s turned away from him, looking around his office. 

There’s a screen on the wall - switched off right now - that she hadn’t noticed before, and she wonders if he’ll let her watch TV. Although, it doesn’t seem to be the cartoon sort of television, rather a security sort of television, the one Mum had shown evidence of Eleanor’s comings and goings on, when she’d revealed to Eleanor she’d known about her sneaking out. She’d forced Eleanor to watch the footage, then had promptly punished her and upped security.

Fat lot of good that had done.

“It’s how I take my breaks in between doing my homework,” Eleanor adds, relenting that perhaps she won’t get to watch television if it isn’t built for showing cartoons. She pulls her attention away from it to bounce back over to him. “Would you like to play a game?”

Augustus gestures to his desk. “I’ve got my own homework to do. My break is over, and I reckon yours should be comin’ to an end soon, too.”

“Oh.” Eleanor approaches the desk and goes to her tiptoes to peek at his papers again. “Well, I could help you with that, if you’d like. That would get it done much quicker, and then you could play!”

Augustus gives another scoff-chuckle, waving a hand at her. “I can do it myself, thank you.”

Eleanor’s face falls. 

It’s starting to sound like he’d prefer doing his homework to playing a game with her, but that can’t be right. Who prefers work to playing? Not her. But, well, she can’t force him to hand over his work, she supposes - perhaps he’s expected to do it himself with no help, like she had been with her homework back at Mum’s. 

She can, however, provide him with another distraction: she finds something else to talk about, as always.

“I like your name, by the way,” Eleanor says, smiling widely. “Augustus - like the Roman! I like it.”

Augustus still looks perplexed at her, like he doesn’t understand what she’s saying, once more put-off by how quickly she changes topic. She thinks to tell him about who Augustus is, but she doesn’t get the chance as he nods, smiling thinly.

“Why, thank you. I’ll be sure to let my momma know, should I ever visit her again.”

Eleanor’s smile falls. Does he not see his mum often? How horrible!

“Where does she live?” Eleanor asks. “Is she not here in Pauper’s Drop?”

Augustus scoffs. “No, she ain’t around here. Think you’ll find she’s still up where the sun is shinin’.”

Eleanor’s eyes widen and they sparkle like the ocean in the light above them.

Of course Augustus is from the surface! He isn’t like her, he’s older and so he had come down here when Rapture had been built, not born beneath the waves like she had. Which, of course, means his parents are from the surface too, as are his grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents and - and so on! Eleanor doubts he would have been allowed to bring his entire family tree down here, so they all must still be up there, with the sun. 

That’s sad, Eleanor thinks, but how fascinating, also!

“Where does she live?!” Eleanor asks excitedly, hand coming up to grab at his trouser leg, a hand which he brushes off quickly. “Is she in India? Or Ireland? Or is she somewhere else in the world?!”

Augustus stares, then he replies, “Panama.”

“Where is that?”

“‘Tween Central and South America.”

Eleanor gasps, a long noise of wonder and awe that he regards with equal parts confusion and amusement. 

“What’s it like there? Can you see the sun all the time? Is it nice in Panama? Does your mum like it there? Is that where you’re from? Did you not like it? Is that why you’re here, in Rapture? Is it -”

Augustus holds up his hand to silence her. “Woah, now. Slow down, kid, holy Moses. Now, I know you little ones run on stronger batteries than us grown-ups, but I didn’t reckon you could wag your chin quite so quick.” He puts that hand he’d raised on his knee. “No more questions, now.”

Eleanor’s smile falls. 

Is he not going to answer a single one? How will she know about Panama if he doesn’t tell her about it? She hasn’t seen Amir in a while; she hopes she will soon, she’ll ask to see his book about the surface again. Maybe that will tell her about Panama if Augustus won’t.

“Your mum must be lonely,” Eleanor says, thinking of her own mother, wherever she is now. “Is your daddy with her?”

Augustus frowns lightly. “Now, what did I just say about askin’ questions?”

“It’s only a little one. Please?”

He sighs through his nose. “Fine. Yeah, they’re together. Surrounded by other folk.”

“Really?” Eleanor smiles. “Is Panama friendly, then?”

Augustus cocks his head, raising an eyebrow at her for breaking the rule he’s just set yet again, but he chooses to reply to this all by himself, “Could say that. But they don’t really have a choice in the matter - the cemetery’s just built that way.”

Eleanor starts to think of her next question, but then his words and their meaning hit her, and her grin slides off of her face and down to join the sinking feeling in her tummy. She knows what a cemetery is, she’s seen them in books. There’s one in Arcadia, but Mum has never taken her to that place, not even when she’d asked nicely.

Her expression crumples and she shrinks back, feeling guilty. She must’ve upset him so much, talking about his deceased parents like that; no wonder he’d been frowning at her.

“I’m so sorry…” she says, lips automatically pouting.

Augustus’s lips twitch upwards amusedly.

“Don’t be.” Augustus sits back in his chair. “Think you’ll find it’s no longer a sore spot; been too many years now.” He points at her. “But it coulda been, so let that be an example of why you don’t ask too many questions.”

Eleanor blinks, astonished. 

Is he not upset at her for that? How can he not be? Eleanor would be devastated if someone made her speak lightly of Mum or Aunt Gracie after they passed. How long has he been without his mummy and daddy? Eleanor would think the time would make it worse, not easier.

“My mum’s gone away for a while,” Eleanor says, to try and relate to him on some level. She can’t sympathise with death, per se, but she can sympathise with a lost parent.

“Is that so?” Augustus replies.

“Yes. I’m not sure where, but I think she’ll come back one day. Until then, I have my Aunt Gracie, and just her, too, because I don’t have a daddy. I asked Mum why I don’t have one, and she said it’s because I’m ‘like a rare flower - grown with care, by a single gardener’,” she does her signature impression of her mother as she quotes her, scrunching her face up into a frown, “and that I have a destiny, and that it’s ‘far greater than one Daddy can understand’. So I said, ‘If I have a baby, could she grow up and have the destiny and I could have a real daddy?’, and that’s when she told me to go, so I’m not sure if I will get a daddy, but I hope I will, some day.” 

Augustus stares in silence at her, bewildered and mildly disturbed, and Eleanor simply smiles at him. 

Evidently, his mummy never said anything like that to him, but she hopes he understands that she, too, is missing her mummy - because of course he misses his mummy, even if he says he’s over her death. How can he not miss his parents?

“That’s…” Augustus says, trailing off into more silence. He shakes his head, blinks rapidly, then fixes her with a forced smile, though his stare gives away how uncomfortable he is. “That’s...just dandy, honey.”

“Mm-hm.” Eleanor tilts her head. “Would you mind telling me what your daddy was like? Was he nice? Did he protect you and let you ride on his shoulders?”

Augustus gives a small snort at the idea. “No, he did not. Don’t recall him bein’ anything but a workhorse. Speakin’ of which…” He gestures to his papers pointedly.

Eleanor’s face falls, disappointed. 

If Augustus’s daddy didn’t allow him to ride on his shoulders, he doesn’t sound like a very nice daddy. No wonder Augustus doesn’t want to discuss him.

She opens her mouth to ask another question, only to be cut off by the phone on his desk ringing, making Eleanor jolt in shock and gasp. 

Her mind immediately going back to the incident earlier, she assumes it to be Aunt Gracie and stares terrified at the phone, shrinking back and stepping away from the device. She already feels her heart pounding as thoughts of yelling and punishment pass through her mind.

Augustus glances at her. He holds up a hand to her in a calming motion, reaches over and picks up the receiver, presses it to his ear, then says, “Augustus Sinclair speakin’.” 

There’s a pause where Eleanor is watching him, observing his reaction to the phone call; he looks serious when he picks up the phone, but his expression quickly melts into a grin and he looks like he wants to laugh.

“Andy!” he says with gusto. “What a surprise! Why, I was expectin’ you to cease contact with me altogether. To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

Augustus tilts the phone away to stifle a chuckle into the back of his free hand, then he glances at Eleanor again and turns his chair to show her his back as he presses the phone to his ear again.

“Uh-huh...Well, now, how do you s’ppose that’s an issue with me? Last I checked, all that Fontaine business was your problem ta solve. I’m perfectly content with -...Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Well, I’ll keep that in mind, as I do with the favour I did for you. Your other problem would still be walkin’ the streets if I hadn’t humbly opened the doors to my, ah, greybar hotel and offered her a room...Right, right...Sullivan? Why’s Sullivan with ya?...To me? What would I know about anythin’?...What you call precautions, Andy, someone else might call paranoia...In my neck of the woods? Well, I’m in Pauper’s Drop right now, so it’ll take a while.” Augustus sighs. “Fine, fine. Think my hour down here in the slums is over, anyway. I’ll hitch a ride on the Express, then; reckon it’ll get there faster...An’ to you, Andy.”

Augustus turns back around and puts the phone down, frowning at it like it’s the one that has upset him, and not the man he’d been speaking to on the other end of the line.

“Sure, sure,” he grumbles; Eleanor’s fairly certain she’s not supposed to hear this, but then she also thinks he might’ve forgotten she’s here. “Like my time ain’t worth the salt you wanted me ta spread upon the earth…” 

He waves his hands as his tone turns sarcastic at the end there, and Eleanor blinks her big eyes at him, curious. 

Augustus starts shuffling his papers - including the one from the typewriter - and gathering them together into a pile. He taps the collective bottom edge of the pile against the desk, making sure the papers are straight, then he catches the way Eleanor is trying to peek at them again and his gaze locks on her, like he’s just remembered she’s in the room.

His thin smile returns and he leans on his desk to address her, his eyes narrowing a bit.

“Well, now, this was an enthrallin’ conversation, sweet pea,” Augustus says, “but I gotta get goin’, so you should probably think about doin’ the same.”

Eleanor doesn’t reply to that, just steps back as he rises from his chair. 

Augustus acquires an empty briefcase from under his desk and places the papers within that, then he snaps the case shut and holds it in his left hand. After a second of thought, he ducks down beneath his desk again, opens the safe closest to Eleanor and pulls out a bottle of clear liquid, muttering about how it would help soften Sullivan up. 

He checks that his glasses are still on their cord around his neck, then he turns to her and uses the bottle to gesture for her to start to head out of his office.

Eleanor does as she’s told, trotting along beside him as he guides her out. 

When they’re outside, Augustus locks the door with the genetic key that he retrieves from his pocket, then he nods at her and takes his leave.

Eleanor, however, isn’t quite that easy to get rid of, not when she’s found someone she’s curious about. So - even though it might be a bit impolite to do so - she quickly follows him, her steps making a soft pitter-patter on the floor of the Hamilton as she hurries to take her place at his side.

When she gets there, Augustus does a double-take, sighs and waves his bottle at her dismissively, the clear liquid sloshing around.

“I don’t need an escort, thank you,” he says.

“Where are you going?” Eleanor asks, bypassing his dismissal and launching herself back into conversation.

“To a meetin’.”

“With the person on the phone?”

“Yup.” Augustus does the shooing hand motion with the fingers not wrapped around the bottle’s neck. “And it ain’t somethin’ you can sit in on, if that’s what you’re hopin’ for.”

Eleanor hadn’t been hoping for that - well, alright, maybe a little. She wants to know who ‘Andy’ is and why Augustus hadn’t liked talking to him and what they were even talking about. But she understands if Augustus won’t let her sit in the room - she could wait outside!

“That’s alright. I understand,” Eleanor says, folding her hands behind her back like a professional person, oblivious as to why Augustus chuckles afterwards. 

They reach the staircase from before and Augustus starts to easily walk down it, not bothered at all by the weirdly-styled steps. 

Eleanor, on the other hand, isn’t so lucky nor experienced, and her footsteps immediately slow as she comes up to the stairs. She puts a hand to the wall to steady herself, carefully moves down to the next step, then shuffles so she can climb down to the one after that. 

Her foot slides in her shoe uncomfortably and she almost loses her footing, making her yelp briefly in panic.

From the bottom of the stairs, Augustus starts at hearing her yelp and turns around to see her struggling. He sighs softly, looks around himself, then comes back up. As he goes, he tucks the bottle under his left arm.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he says dryly as he approaches. “C’mere.” 

Eleanor looks up to find him standing beside her on the step, right hand out in offering. It surprises her for a moment, but then she smiles and she takes his offer. 

Eleanor reaches up and wraps her little fingers the best she can around his palm, feeling the uncomfortable twitch his hand gives, but nonetheless he wraps his fingers around hers, encasing them. His hand is, obviously, larger than hers, she can’t get her fingers all the way around it, but his hold on hers is secure, and so she feels safe as he starts to guide her down the stairs. 

They walk together, Augustus letting Eleanor put her weight on his hand when she needs to, showing patience when Eleanor delicately toddles from one step to the next. It’s a careful procedure, but it’s much quicker than it ever would have taken her since she can’t crawl down the stairs like she had done to go up, and as they go, Eleanor counts the number of steps on the staircase under her feet.

As soon as they reach the bottom, Augustus is quick to release her hand, taking the bottle out of his armpit to hold it by the neck again.

Eleanor grins up at him, curtsying humbly.

“Thank you,” she says happily.

One side of Augustus’s lips turn upwards; it’s a tired sort of half-smile, but a half-smile nonetheless. Her manners are appreciated, it seems. 

“You’re welcome,” he replies, and goes to continue his way out, stopping when he notices the way Eleanor stares at the staircase.

He watches her as she jabs a finger at the air repeatedly, squinting at the steps, and then turns to Augustus, points at the staircase and says to him matter-of-factly, “There are twenty-nine steps.”

Augustus stares, looks at the staircase, then looks back at her to nod. “Fascinatin’. Is that important information?”

Eleanor shrugs. “I like knowing these things. Mum never let me go out, so I like keeping track of the little details when I do get to explore, just for fun.” 

Augustus hums and turns to go, resuming his trek out of the Hamilton.

Eleanor, of course, follows along behind him, trying to keep up with his longer strides. Moving her little legs a bit quicker, she manages to get herself standing at his side rather than behind him, and she reaches up to wrap her tiny fingers around the heel of his palm the best she can, the only part of his hand she can hold since he’s carrying the bottle.

Immediately, Augustus flinches and pulls his hand back, taking it out of her reach.

“Ah - None o’ that, now, thank you,” he says.

Eleanor’s expression falls in disappointment - he’s just held her hand when they were going down the stairs. Surely, he should be comfortable holding it as they walk together, what’s the big deal? But, well, she supposes she can’t force him. Mum hadn’t been fond of hand-holding either.

“What’s your other hotel like?” Eleanor asks, tilting her head up at him.

Augustus arches a brow and looks down at her. “What’s that?”

“The Greybar Hotel. Is it nice? Is it like The Sinclair Deluxe? Could I go there one day?”

Augustus’s eyes flash with realisation and he gives a small chuckle. “Honey, I should hope you never end up there - an’ you should be hopin’ the same thing.”

Eleanor’s face scrunches up in confusion. Why wouldn’t he want more business for his hotel? Isn’t that the point of the place, for him to get more money from the people staying there, like with that crying lady at The Sinclair Deluxe?

Doesn’t seem like a very sound business practice to her, telling people not to go there.

“Where is it?” Eleanor asks.

“Nowhere you wanna go an’ nowhere you’ll end up, granted you keep your nose clean,” Augustus replies. He comes to a stop midway out of the exit to the Town Square, which has Eleanor stopping too. “Speakin’ of hotels, sweetie pie: you should probably be headin’ back to the Deluxe. Reckon your auntie’s probably noticed you’re missin’ by now, an’ you don’t wanna get into trouble, now, do ya? I’d imagine she wouldn’t want you followin’ around a stranger.”

“You’re not a stranger,” Eleanor says, “you’re Augustus!”

“That, I am. But this still isn’t a preferable situation to find you in.”

Eleanor tilts her head as she thinks about it, giving a concentrated hum, then she sighs. “I suppose you’re right,” she concedes, “Aunt Gracie probably wouldn’t like to see me speaking to you. She talks about you quite a bit, and it’s never nice things.”

Something changes in Augustus’s body language. His back goes rigid as he arches an eyebrow, doing that thing where he turns his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye.

“...Does she now?” he asks slowly.

“Yes,” Eleanor replies. “She says you’re a fat cat and that you’re a snake in the grass that doesn’t care about anybody but yourself. But that can’t be true,” she smiles sweetly up at him, “because you just helped me walk down the stairs, so I don’t think you’re selfish, Augustus.”

Augustus smiles back, though his smile doesn’t seem as bright as before.

“Well, thank you for the vote of confidence,” he says, then he peers at her. “But, ah...What else does Aunt Gracie say?”

Eleanor opens her mouth to answer, pauses, then ducks her chin. “I’m not allowed to use swear words.”

“I won’t tell anyone. Be our little secret.” 

He mimes pulling a zip across his mouth with his index finger and thumb.

“Are you good at keeping secrets?” Eleanor asks, hands coming together to fidget.

Augustus’s smile turns up at one side and there’s a twinkle in his eye. “Very good.”

Eleanor thinks about it some more, then nods twice. “Alright, then. So long as it’s only shared between us.”

“O’ course. I’m no blabbermouth.”

Eleanor gives a little nod and a smile, then worriedly looks around. He might not tell anyone, but that doesn’t mean eavesdroppers will deliver on the same promise, so she looks up at him with pleading eyes and motions for him to come down to her level.

Augustus crouches down beside her, tilting his ear at her in offering, and Eleanor cups a hand beside her mouth to whisper the bad word to him.

Immediately, Augustus’s eyebrows lift and his smile turns thin but wide as he turns his head slightly like he has an audience to address, then Eleanor steps back to indicate she’s finished telling the secret, and he rises back up to full height.

“Well,” he says thoughtfully, “thank you for tellin’ me, sweet pea.” His face contorts into that same pout from earlier. “Why, I have no idea why Gracie would be sayin’ such unkind things behind my back, but I assure you, honey, I will rectify that the very next time I see her! Whatever I’ve done to get on her bad side, I’ll make it up to her.”

Eleanor smiles up at him. 

See? Augustus can’t be a that-word because he’s going to make amends! That-words don’t make amends.

With that, he resumes his journey out of the town square, and Eleanor scurries after him.

When they reach the stairs leading up to the plaza, Augustus starts making his merry way up, his longer legs and bigger feet making it nice and easy for him; Eleanor, on the other hand, has to be careful with how she steps. The steps aren’t as difficult to manoeuvre as the ones at the Hamilton, but they’re still enough to slow her down.

“Hurry now,” Augustus says aloud, teasing, already passed the first landing, “otherwise I’ll be leavin’ ya behind.”

“I’m going as quickly as I can,” Eleanor replies, face scrunched up with the effort of climbing and counting at the same time. 

“You struggle with goin’ up the stairs too?”

“Not always. These stairs are just...different.”

She makes it to the top of the first six steps, reaching the landing to turn the corner, thanks to getting on all fours to clamber up the stairs in a way that would have Mum comparing her to some sort of monkey. A trait of her growing barbarism, Mum would probably call it.

Hmph! Well, Eleanor thinks that’s a jolly good thing to have!

She starts to head up the next set when she hears him sigh, and as she reaches the second step, his leg appears in her peripheral vision. She looks up to find him offering his hand, looking at her with an exasperated half-smile.

Eleanor stares, then gasps happily and reaches up to take it.

“Thank you,” she says sweetly.

“You’re welcome,” he replies as his fingers encase hers again, and he assists her the rest of the way up the stairs.

Augustus is quick to release her hand when they reach the top. Eleanor starts to let go of him too when something occurs to her, and she gasps and quickly snatches hold of his fingers, using her other hand to point down the stairs.

“Oh, no! I lost count!” Eleanor tugs on his hand insistently. “We have to go back down!”

Augustus frowns lightly, gently trying to pull his fingers from her grasp, but she holds tight.

“Honey,” he says exasperatedly, “my meetin’.”

Eleanor pouts up at him, then looks down the stairs longingly, mind running a mile a minute as she tries to count the stairs. She’s not sure she trusts herself to envision them correctly, though, which carries the risk of miscounting.

“I counted six in the first set,” she says thoughtfully.

Augustus sighs, then cocks his head to peek around the corner. “...Think I can count twelve on the second.”

Eleanor looks up at him, beaming, then looks down at the steps in front of them. She points at each one as she counts them, finds there to be eleven, then adds up the sum in her head, fingers extending automatically to be used as counters for the numbers.

Beaming still, she grins at him. “Twenty-nine. Just like in the Hamilton!”

Augustus replies with a simple, “Mm-hm,” and he slides his hand out of hers to retrieve the bottle from under his arm.

He’d mentioned that she should go back to the hotel, but he makes no effort to lead her back there himself, and so Eleanor - being the kind of kid she is - simply continues to follow him, which he only gives a small sigh at. 

They walk together through the main plaza of Pauper’s Drop, passing the Fishbowl Diner again, and Eleanor sees they’re heading toward the train station and smiles widely. 

She hasn’t been on a train since Aunt Gracie had officially moved her to The Sinclair Deluxe and, despite the weary faces of the few passengers that had also been in the train car, she hadn’t minded it at all. She’d passed the time by bouncing up and down the aisle and watching one of the TV screens in there, upon which Andrew Ryan had told them about the Great Chain and these things called Plasmids.

Before they reach the gate for the train station, however, Augustus stops and looks down at her, pursing his lips for a moment, then turns to her properly to ask, “You know the way back to the hotel, don’t you, sweet pea?”

Eleanor nods. “Yes.” She turns around to point toward the bulkhead at the other end of the plaza. “It’s through that door, through the tunnel, through another door, and then through some double doors, and then I’m back in the hotel.”

She smiles up at him, expecting praise.

He nods. “An’ you know your room number?”

“Three-oh-seven.”

Augustus nods again and opens his mouth to say something, only for the both of them to jolt in shock as a voice cuts him off, yelling.

“Eleanor! What’re you doing with him?!”

Both look over to find Aunt Gracie sprinting as quickly as she can from across the plaza, holding the skirt of her dress up above her ankles in order to run better, her pace then hindered only by her heels.

This is good, Eleanor thinks - Augustus can make amends with Aunt Gracie now, just like he said he would. What perfect timing her aunt has!

“Ah,” Augustus mutters above her, “that Aunt Gracie.”

Eleanor frowns confusedly and looks up at him. Hadn’t he already said he knew Aunt Gracie? Why does he sound like he’s only just recognising her?

Before she can ask, he gives his own little frown and looks down at her. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” Eleanor says, smiling politely now, “but it’s Eleanor. Eleanor Lamb.”

Something flashes in Augustus’s eyes and he straightens up, head turning up slightly so he has to view her from the bottoms of his eyes, then he gives a soft, disbelieving chuckle and shakes his head, turning it away to mutter to himself some more.

“Well,” he says, tone still shaking slightly with his chuckle, “ain’t Rapture just a small world?”

Eleanor cocks her head, confused again, and opens her mouth to say that Rapture is technically a city, only her hand is snatched up and she’s yanked away from Augustus. She nearly falls over thanks to her uncomfortable shoes, but fortunately catches herself on the skirt of Aunt Gracie’s dress as she’s pulled behind her aunt, who scowls at Augustus.

Eleanor looks worriedly up at her, then to Augustus, who gives an indifferent smile.

“Afternoon,” he says to Aunt Gracie.

“What’re you doing with her?” Aunt Gracie snaps, eyes narrowed. “Leading a poor, defenseless little girl around - what game are you playing?”

She sees the bottle he’s carrying, narrows her eyes at it as she catches the sight of ‘Sinclair Spirits’ on the label, then she looks at him with a fierce, disbelieving look in her eyes.

“Now, hang on a second.” Augustus cocks his head, putting his weight on one hip; if his hands weren’t full, he would be putting them on his pelvis instead. “Think you’ll find your girl is the one who wandered off an’ sought me out. Couldn’t shake her, no matter how I tried,” he gives a smile to Eleanor, who smiles back, “but, well, I reckon it’s better she ended up with me than some other unfavourable individual.”

“There’s only one unfavourable individual around here,” Aunt Gracie says, “and it’s the very one she ended up with.”

“Well,” Augustus looks at her knowingly, “it’s an awful shame you feel that way. But if you’ll excuse me, I got a meetin’ to get to, so I’ll be takin’ my leave now.” He nods at them, gives a half-smile to Eleanor one last time. “I bid you both good day.”

With that, Augustus passes through the gates and disappears into the Atlantic Express station.

Eleanor waves from behind Aunt Gracie, calling out to him, “Bye, Augustus! See you later!”

She hears Aunt Gracie mutter angrily, “Absolutely not.” 

Aunt Gracie spins around to her, catching Eleanor’s attention, and she drops down to Eleanor’s height, crouching with her knees together in her hugging dress. She grasps Eleanor’s shoulders in both hands. 

“Eleanor, baby girl, what were you doing with that man? You should know not to go anywhere without me like that!”

Eleanor looks uncertain. “I...I saw him and I wanted to know what he was doing, that’s all. I just wanted to know who he was.”

Aunt Gracie scoffs. “You know who he is.” She looks over her shoulder, scowling in the direction Augustus had disappeared in. “He’s just a fat cat who’s taking advantage of the good people down here. Only cares about himself.”

Eleanor fidgets with her hands, looking in that direction too, then looks up at Grace. “He doesn’t. He helped me up and down the stairs. He was rude to me at first, but he apologised, and then he was nice to me. I thought he was nice…”

Aunt Gracie looks at her, then sighs. “That’s because he wanted you to think that. He’s just a snake, honey, and I don’t want to see you going near him again, understand? We don’t talk to men like that. Good God,” the bigger picture comes to her then, and she gives Eleanor a hug, “baby girl, what were you even doing, running outta the room like that? Anything could’ve happened to you!”

Eleanor doesn’t respond, just stares at the train station over Aunt Gracie’s shoulder, then Aunt Gracie is pulling away and standing up and taking Eleanor’s hand to lead her back to The Sinclair Deluxe, and Eleanor watches over her shoulder like she expects Augustus to appear again, even as Aunt Gracie is rambling on about running away and talking to strangers. 

… 

Eleanor doesn’t see Augustus again until the next day, when she’s in the sectioned-off part of Aunt Gracie’s apartment that serves as her bedroom, the curtain drawn while Eleanor sits at her tiny table in her tiny chair and does her homework. The book she’s reading from takes up a good portion of the table, given it’s for adults while the table is for kids. 

Teddy is waiting for her, sitting on her pillow and watching the back of her head as she works, and an old Mr. Diary is laying under her bed with an old tape inside. She needs to get a new one, she thinks, for the next time she wants to chat with a Mr. Diary.

There comes a knock at the door, which has Eleanor’s ears perking like a curious animal before Mum’s voice inside her head tells her to stay focused on her work, and so she keeps her head down and her pencil on the page Aunt Gracie had set down in front of her to write on. 

Aunt Gracie answers the door and Eleanor hears her say with disgust, “What do you want?”

“And a good afternoon to you too, Gracie,” comes that familiar Southern drawl, and Eleanor sits up, homework forgotten.

“Augustus!” she whispers with an excited gasp. 

He’s come to see her! Perhaps he’s here to return her hack tool; she should hope not, considering Aunt Gracie is here, but perhaps he’s waiting to speak to her alone so he can return it. Maybe he has a bag with him that he’s hiding it in.

Eleanor gets up from her chair and goes toddling over to the curtain separating her room from the rest of Aunt Gracie’s apartment. She’s about to open it and go out to meet with Augustus when she hears Aunt Gracie splutter nonsense in shock, and she comes to a confused and worried stop.

She tilts her head, pointing her ear toward the curtain to try and hear their conversation better.

“And what is this?!”

“That?” Augustus says. “Why, that’s just the bill for a new camera, after your girl hacked up the last one.” He whistles a long note. “Did a number on it, too. Had to take it down to try an’ fix it.”

“What’re you talking about? There wasn’t anything wrong with the damn camera the last time I looked, and even if there was, I know for a fact that Eleanor wouldn’t have touched it!”

Augustus hums. “Funny you should mention that, since I just so happened to have confiscated this from her, just yesterday. Don’t s’ppose you’d know where she got it from?”

Eleanor’s brow creases in confused, fearful disbelief. 

He can’t have...He doesn’t have her hack tool with him right now, does he? Out in the open? He can’t! He’d said he wouldn’t tell Aunt Gracie what she did, he said he wouldn’t show her the tool, he said!

“I’ve never seen that before in my life,” Aunt Gracie says vehemently, “especially not in little Eleanor’s hands.”

“Don’t suppose you would have. She was awful keen on hidin’ it from ya. Begged me not to tell you, but, well, I wouldn’t want the poor girl to get hurt doin’ somethin’ foolish, now, would I?”

Cautiously, while Augustus speaks, Eleanor peels back the edge of the curtain and pokes her head out, peeking at the two adults standing at the front door. They don’t notice her, but that’s just fine because she doesn’t want to be seen right now, all she wants to know is if Augustus has her -

He does. He’s got her hack tool in one hand, holding it up for Aunt Gracie to see, letting her get an eyeful of it, just as he’d said he wouldn’t do. 

Eleanor feels her heart squeeze painfully, confused at his betrayal.

Hadn’t he…? Weren’t they…? She doesn’t understand...

“Oh, like hell,” Aunt Gracie spits. “You don’t care about her safety, you only care about your next dollar - which won’t be coming from me!” 

She slams the envelope he’d evidently given her against his chest, making him flinch and give a little grunt. 

“I’m not paying a dime until I see -”

“You said you wouldn’t tell her!”

Both Augustus and Aunt Gracie jolt and turn to her, eyes wide in surprise at her sudden appearance as she throws aside the curtain and stomps out into the open.

Eleanor, however, only scowls at Augustus, her fists at her sides, angry tears prickling in the corners of her eyes. If he were her age, she probably would have punched him in the nose by now - and they wouldn’t be friends afterwards.

“You said you wouldn’t tell her! You said you’d borrow it and give it back when she wasn’t here! You said it was a scout’s honour!”

Augustus’s brow furrows. “Honey, I was never a scout.”

Eleanor’s scowl drops in confused, disbelieving dejection, looking him up and down. 

“But I do believe,” Augustus says to Aunt Gracie, a twinkle in his eye, “that you can call that a confession. So, if you’d be so kind as to remove your hand from my person…”

Aunt Gracie’s expression falls as she stares at Eleanor, cross resignation on her face, then she shuts her eyes, sighs, and turns back to Augustus. Slowly, she takes the envelope from where she’d pushed it against his chest, and Augustus brushes off his tie as though she’s left dirt on it.

“She’s just a little girl,” Aunt Gracie says quietly, looking him in the eye.

“Exactly,” Augustus says, “which is why the bill isn’t goin’ to her. You can take this as a teachin’ opportunity; sounds like it’ll be useful for her goin’ forward.”

Aunt Gracie squeezes the envelope in her fist.

“But,” Eleanor speaks up again, desperate and guilty, “but you don’t need to fix the camera! You can just - just put it back because you - you said -”

Augustus shakes his head. “‘Fraid the damage has been done, sweet pea. I’m jus’ here to deliver the message, not to swap methods of repair.”

But he’d - he’d said he knows how to use a hack tool, so he can just - but - but -

“But…” Eleanor tries. “But…”

Aunt Gracie glances back at her, then looks to Augustus. “You just have no shame, do you? Upsetting a little girl like that. You greedy snake.”

Augustus looks at her with an easy smile, then presses his lips together and shrugs a shoulder.

“I was gonna let it slide, given her age, but the canary started to sing and, well,” he leans close to her and mutters, “you know how us -” and he says the bad word Aunt Gracie had called him before, the one Eleanor had told him about, “- are, don’t you?”

Aunt Gracie’s spine goes stiff and her shoulders go rigid.

Augustus stands up straight again. “Ain’t kids grand?” He looks over at Eleanor and winks. “Thanks for the tip, kid.”

And with that, Augustus leaves their doorstep, spinning on one heel and making his merry way down the hall, Eleanor’s hack tool still in his possession. 

It is, Eleanor thinks, her first experience with a liar like that, the first time she tastes betrayal and the first time she feels a heavy guilt, especially as Aunt Gracie turns away from the door that shuts behind her and walks by Eleanor, holding the envelope with the bill for the new camera inside.

“I told you, baby girl,” Aunt Gracie says, voice low, “we don’t talk to men like that.”

Eleanor watches her go by, wanting to apologise, to cry to her that she hadn’t meant to make their situation worse, to offer to pay the bill with whatever she has in her piggy bank, but her tongue is dry and heavy in her mouth and her jaw hangs uselessly.

After that, Eleanor doesn’t speak to Augustus and avoids him if she sees him in the hotel. He isn’t her friend, he’d always meant to confiscate her hack tool as a sense of security, then he’d used her to make a quick buck from Aunt Gracie, to get revenge for being insulted and having his good name spat on, and she doesn’t speak to men like that.

She also never sees her hack tool again.

… 

The next time she runs into Augustus, it’s both a complete accident and an event lost to time, for she won’t remember it in a few years and, in the moment, she doesn’t even realise it’s him. 

Rapture is heaven; it’s all white and pure and heavenly and she doesn’t remember it being any other way. There are monsters that lurk and bad men that try to lure her away and take what they think should be theirs - namely, the syringe she now carries around - but she’s safe, safer than she’s ever been.

Eleanor’s running through Pauper’s Drop, which is decked out in glorious carpets and shimmering chandeliers and fountains that flow with the clearest water Eleanor has ever seen. But as beautiful as Rapture is, she isn’t focused on it, just on the candy-like smell she’s following the trail of. 

It’s leading her toward the edge of the plaza, through an archway; there are two staircases that she can take, but she picks the leftmost one since it’s the first she sees. 

Behind her, in the near distance, is the thump-thump-thumping footsteps of her guardian.

Looking over her shoulder to check for him as she reaches the archway, Eleanor bumps into something, a soft “Oof,” leaving her, and in a flash, her delusions are gone and she sees Rapture for what it is: murky and dark, the complete opposite of the gorgeous, fancy ball she mistakes it for. Pauper’s Drop is, as always, especially downtrodden and dirty and poor.

The person she’s knocked into is almost thrown off balance - out of surprise than the actual force used in her accidental shove - and he hurries to regain it, catching himself on his other foot. As she looks up, he looks down to find out what on earth hit his leg, only to look into her yellow, glowing eyes.

Eleanor gapes at him, horrified by his presence. He’s no longer wearing the crisp tuxedo and big smile her conditioning should be imagining him in; he’s got a shirt and tie and braces that hold up his trousers, and he looks in better condition than the people who usually try to come near her do, but it isn’t right. He’s still a monster.

“A stranger!” she exclaims, stumbling away and pointing at him with the hand that isn’t clutching the syringe for ADAM-infused blood. “I don’t like him!”

The man frowns and opens his mouth to deliver some remark, but gives pause when he peers at her. There’s thought and confusion in his narrowed eyes and furrowed brow, something in her face makes it so, but then there comes a steady THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of quick and heavy footsteps, and the man’s head whips up to look in their direction, expression falling into fear. He’s realised, far too slowly, why it’s bad to be near Eleanor, much less frightening her.

But now Eleanor isn’t quite so scared, not anymore, because her saviour is coming.

The ground shakes beneath them, and so suddenly does come the giant diving suit figure of Daddy, whom Eleanor is quick to hide behind, peeking out at the man worriedly from behind Daddy’s right leg. 

The man goes scrambling backwards as Daddy approaches him, about to run for his life, but Daddy stops in front of him and gives him a chance to see that Daddy’s glass face isn’t the mean red, just the sunny yellow, which means he isn’t quite violently angry yet - just moderately angry.

He’s getting there, though, and he’s armed with a drill that’s almost as wide as the man’s waist, so Eleanor sees that the man is quick to try and remedy the situation.

He steps back from Daddy, who stares him down as he does so, his drill crossed over his chest to dissuade the man from getting closer. The man throws up his hands in surrender, showing that he is no threat to Eleanor or Daddy, he has no weapon, and he needs no ADAM.

Eleanor doesn’t believe him and she’s this close to telling Daddy to X his eyes.

“Take it easy, big fella!” the man exclaims. “I wasn’t goin’ near ‘er, honest. Your girl bumped into me, I think you’ll find. I was just mindin’ my own business.”

Daddy continues to stare at him in silence, sizing him up and daring him to come closer. He holds up his drill horizontally at the man, gesturing with it for him to keep his distance, and the man holds his hands up higher.

Daddy watches him closely, figuring him out, then turns away from him and toward Eleanor, giving a whale-like moan at her, and suddenly, Rapture is back as Eleanor should be seeing it: bright and pure and beautiful, all silk and lace and ribbons. Daddy is made of gold and white and green, looking like a knight that will save his little princess from any peril, and the man is wearing a regal tuxedo of brilliant black and cotton gloves of stark white, a large, happy smile on his face.

Eleanor feels as though fear had always been nonexistent to her, like her happiness had never depleted, and she grins up at Daddy. She knows Daddy’s noises are scary to other people, but to Eleanor, they’re like a soft lullaby that she holds dear to her heart. They mean she’s safe, which she always is with Daddy - her hero, her saviour, her perfect, perfect daddy.

“You rescued me, Daddy!” Eleanor squeals, bouncing up and down. “Up, Daddy, up!”

She stretches her arms up in the air, bouncing higher, and only stops when Daddy gives his permission by relinquishing his drill and reaching down with both hands for her, the light catching the isosceles triangle on the back of Daddy’s glove. 

Hands under her armpits, Daddy picks Eleanor up, lifting her above his head and settling her on his shoulders, in the space between his helmet and the containers he carries for health and EVE. 

Eleanor feels safer than she ever has before. She hugs Daddy’s big, metal head with her little arms, nuzzling her cheek against it lovingly.

“Why, thank you, Sir Daddy,” she says with a giggle, climbing up and laying over the top of Daddy’s head, leaning her own head down to try to peek at his yellow-glowing, glass face. 

Daddy gently pats her head with one of his big hands, making Eleanor laugh.

She stops and lifts her head to look forward, something drawing her attention away, then she presses her palms to Daddy’s head, straightens up and leans her head back, taking a good, long sniff at the air, shutting her yellow eyes. The sharp smell familiar to her, she bounces and points in the direction behind the man. 

“ADAM, Daddy, it’s nearby!” she exclaims, and, through their connection, shows Daddy the shimmering trail leading to the angel.

Daddy lets out another whale-like noise and starts to make his hulking way toward the angel she’s sniffing out in the distance. His footsteps make the ground shake again, his glass face fixed firmly in the direction his girl is leading him in. 

The man watches him come closer and goes to step out of the way, but Daddy beats him to it; he’s decided for himself that the man is still too close for his liking and solves the problem by shoving him aside, his big, heavy hand slamming against the man’s sternum.

Letting out a choked “Umph,”, the man goes stumbling, almost losing his footing completely this time. He catches himself on the nearby wall and lifts his head to look at Daddy.

“Hey, now!” he exclaims as Daddy passes by. “I was movin’ aside for ya!”

Daddy ignores him; he’s probably already forgotten the man exists, now that he’s not in their way and no longer a recognised threat to Eleanor. 

Daddy’s a good daddy like that: always focused on Eleanor, never letting himself get distracted from leading, following or protecting her, carrying her on his shoulders when she requests like a good daddy should. He’s the best daddy - she’ll be telling the other girls that later.

Eleanor loves him dearly, just as she loves the sweet drink of ADAM, and she bounces excitedly on Daddy’s shoulders as she anticipates another taste of the stuff. She thinks of nothing more as Daddy carries her off, effortlessly walking down the leftmost staircase that would probably be quite a trek for little Eleanor, what with her tiny legs.

Behind them, the man harrumphs at Daddy and, as Daddy is reaching the bottom of one set of stairs and turning the corner, he calls sarcastically, “And a ‘good day’ to you too, chief.”

[arcade-emporia]

On Subject Delta and the role of identity in Bioshock 2

This is a long fancy title for what essentially was a YouTube comment that got waaaay out of hand. I love Bioshock 2 and the characters in it so I just sort of wound up spilling out all of my thoughts and wanted to share them. Hope you enjoy, if you decide to read them!

. . .

As much as I’d’ve loved to see what Delta really looked like before finding Rapture, I think that part of the profundity of his character stems from his anonymity, and ever showing it without the proper setup would just diminish the effects of his backstory.

Rapture took everything from him, but the one thing in particular that the story kept pulling focus back to was his identity. Even before he became a Big Daddy, he was nobody — no one ever knew his real name and just called him by the celebrity nickname that he never even chose. From the beginning he was defined by his use to others and how he was seen in the eyes of his fellows, not by who he actually was. Then Ryan thought he was a spy — another identity confusion — and threw him into a vicious cycle of experimentation and exploitation that eventually ended with his admittance into and ultimate erasure under the Protector Program. He was an experiment to the scientists who tested their plasmids on him, a nameless goon to the audience who watched him fight for his life for their own entertainment, a conveniently-absent donor father to Sophia Lamb, and then finally he just became Subject Delta: a voiceless, faceless machine, completely stripped of his identity and free will and doomed to spend the rest of his life protecting a kid that only knew him through the deluded lens of the same dehumanizing procedure that had stolen him away.

But then Eleanor really loved him. Really, truly loved the face behind the glass, not just as the protector that she was conditioned to follow but as a father who she’d chosen to adore all on her own. She loved him enough to spend years trying bring him back from the dead and trust him — not just as a guardian, but as a person — to come and rescue her once she succeeded. Eleanor was the first person to see Delta as a real human being after years of dehumanization and torment, looking beyond his name and his past and trusting the person he is underneath all that. Even if he kills every person in Rapture, Eleanor will still follow his example, still call him father and have faith that he knows what’s best for her.

Sinclair helped to open his eyes, too. Even though their history was far from spotless, Sinclair was the first one to openly recognize his autonomy and offer him any kind of choice after his transformation and ultimate resurrection. Sinclair lets Delta choose who to kill and who to spare, gives him options and trusts his judgement — again, for the first time in a lifetime — not based on programming or with the expectation of acquiescence, but with genuine trust in his decisionmaking.

Even in small ways like the nicknames your trio of allies give you — Sport, Herr Delta, Father (not ‘Daddy’ like she’d been programmed to say), Chief, Son — the people Delta chooses to trust are the ones who see him as a human being underneath all that standard-issue Alpha Series armor. To Lamb, he’s an irritant standing between her and her life’s work. To the Rapture Family, he’s a heretic to be hung for whatever crimes their leader decides he is guilty of. But in the eyes of Eleanor, Tenenbaum, and Sinclair, he was the dictator of his own identity, and they gave him the chance to prove that. To them, he’s not just another experiment, not just one out of the countless interchangeable Big Daddies waiting to die for their Little Sisters, not just one more nameless criminal on the Alpha Series checklist to be imprisoned and erased from existence, not even just the public’s beloved Johnny Topside, forgotten just as quickly as he rose to fame — he was, finally, a real human being again.

Subject Delta’s story is all about the loss and reclamation of a person’s identity, and the part of it that hits the hardest is that — even though there were the scarce few who let him decide who he was for himself — the people who took it from him won. We don’t know his name; we’ve never seen his face; we’ve never even heard him speak a word that wasn’t garbled by the things they did to him. Whoever Delta was is gone, and we will never see that person again. Instead, we must let him exist independent of his history and define his character through his actions in the present. That’s the kicker of his narrative: it doesn’t matter who Johnny Topside was. Subject Delta has rebuilt the identity that Rapture stole from him through his actions in-game, and no matter who or what he used to be, the person we played as is who he is now, and — after so long in the dark — that person is a man of his own making

I just love subject delta ok he deserves to be happy